This thesis describes and analyses distinctive characteristics of the emerging variety of English, that is, Nepali English. It draws on news texts written in Nepali English and compares them with similar news texts appearing in Australian newspapers. On the basis of the analysis, a preliminary taxonomy of markers of Nepali English is established.The research draws theoretical insights from sociolinguistics, contrastive rhetoric/contrastive discourse analysis and the analysis of news as discourse. Findings and the analysis of the findings are presented by using analytical models developed and widely used in the study of non-native varieties of English. Analysis and discussion of the findings suggest that systematic and regular features of Nepali English have developed, and these formal features have specific functions in the context in which they are used.

[pt] A pesquisa em redes móveis e computação pervasiva têm demonstrado que adaptação dinâmica e sensibilidade ao contexto são requisitos básicos para aplicações nestes ambientes. Muitos dos trabalhos sobre adaptação dinâmica sensível ao contexto encontrados na literatura se baseiam nas informações de contexto de dispositivos para selecionar e executar uma determinada adaptação, mas somente no próprio dispositivo. Para aplicações distribuídas cientes do contexto envolvendo um grupo de dispositivos portáteis, executando em uma rede sem fio, por vezes faz-se necessária uma adaptação conjunta e coordenada de todos os dispositivos do grupo, adaptação essa que depende de um contexto global do grupo. Este trabalho apresenta Moratus, um protocolo para obter o contexto global de um grupo de dispositivos e executar uma única adaptação de serviços de comunicação em todos os dispositivos de forma coordenada. Este protocolo também leva em conta e trata desconexões involuntárias de membros do grupo durante o processo. O Moratus é o elemento central de um middleware, o SACS, que permite que tal adaptação coordenada ocorra de forma transparente e sem interrupção para a aplicação distribuída que usa o middleware. / [en] Research in mobile networks and pervasive computing has shown that dynamic adaptation and context-awareness are basic requirements for applications executing in such environments. Many of the works about context-awareness dynamic adaptation found in the literature use the device's context information to execute an adaptation only locally at the device. For distributed, context-aware applications composed of a group of portable devices (executing in a wireless network) sometimes it is necessary to perform a collective and coordinated adaptation at all the devices of the group, and where this adaptation depends on the global context of the group. This thesis presents Moratus, a protocol that processes the global context of a group and executes a unique adaptation of a communication service at all devices in the group in a coordinated way. This protocol also handles unplanned disconnections of group members during the adaptation process. Moratus is the central element of a middleware named SACS, which allows that such coordinated adaptation is performed transparently and without disruption for the distributed application based on this middleware.

My diploma thesis deals with Cross-curricular themes for teaching in primary school education and especially with the Cross-curricular theme Education to Thinking in European and Global Context. In the theoretical section I have explained the changes in the curriculum, the White paper and the Framework educational program and briefly I have characterized all Cross-curricular themes. Theoretically and within educational areas I have focused on the Cross-curricular theme Education to Thinking in European and Global Context. In the practical section I have done a survey of primary school teachers to examine attitudes to Cross-curricular themes and the integration of the Cross-curricular theme Education to Thinking in European and Global Context into lessons. I have compared relation to each Cross-curricular theme. I have also suggested an intensive instruction leading to the formation of attitudes and opinions by content of the Education to Thinking in European and Global Context.

The main goal of this diploma thesis is further analysis of cross-curricural subject ?Education towards Thinking in European and Global Context? at the second stage at the elementary school from the perspective of geography. The first part of the thesis is dealing with position and importance of this cross-curricular subject in Framework Education Programme for Elementary Education, especially with emphasis on geography education; is also summarizing existing experiences of its education first at pilot elementary schools and also according to results of a survey at elementary schools in place of my residence. I suggest my own attitude to educating cross-curricular subject ?Education towards Thinking in European and Global Context? from the perspective of geography teacher with regard to new trends in education in the second part of my diploma thesis. Teaching material is designed in a form of a workbook and there is also available a methodological guide interfaced with this workbook for teachers.

This thesis deals with depth estimation using convolutional neural networks. I propose a three-part model as a solution to this problem. The model contains a global context network which estimates coarse depth structure of the scene, a gradient network which estimates depth gradients and a refining network which utilizes the outputs of previous two networks to produce the final depth map. Additionally, I present a normalized loss function for training neural networks. Applying normalized loss function results in better estimates of the scene's relative depth structure, however it results in a loss of information about the absolute scale of the scene.